When Northeastern University announced on Instagram that pop star Hilary Duff would be its commencement speaker, the news was met with instant chatter: “epic,” “amazing,” and “childhood dream come true” were among the comments on the video post featuring the school’s mascot, Paws, in a sequined jacket bopping along to Duff’s song “What Dreams are Made Of.”

Meanwhile, the barbs started slinging on Reddit. “And to think when I graduated from northeastern I only got Christiane Amanpour,” one commenter quipped, referring to CNN’s chief international anchor. Others complained that choosing the 38-year-old mom of four amounted to millennial cosplay — “So Yesterday.”

One thing’s certain: Duff’s got people talking. And while she’s an unorthodox choice in some ways, this commencement season, she’s also one of several celebrity speakers, including Conan O’Brien at Harvard, Henry Winkler at Emerson, and Laura Dern at Amherst College, coming soon to a campus near you.

As always, the speaker’s challenge is to deliver an inspiring graduation speech. However, the usual “follow your passion” platitudes won’t cut it in 2026, when the value of a college education is no longer assumed by most Americans, said Steven Mintz, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies family life and frequently writes about higher education.

“Today’s speeches need to acknowledge the barriers to success and the anxieties that many students and parents feel — over student debt, credential inflation, economic uncertainty, and the disruptions caused by AI,” he said.

Speakers must also be cognizant of who’s watching: not just students but also their entire families in some cases, as well as faculty, alumni, and donors. And amid the federal government’s ongoing scrutiny of higher education in general and targeting of DEI efforts in particular, they must energize the crowd without drawing unwanted attention to the school or alienating important stakeholders.

They must do all of this while putting on a great show, one that has the potential to speak volumes about the host institution.

When a compelling speaker is announced, admissions teams will often “shout it from the rooftops” in their marketing and outreach to prospective students, said Jayson Weingarten, a senior admissions consultant with the Manhattan-based Ivy Coach.

“These choices reflect how an institution sees itself and who it hopes to attract,” he added. “Each choice carries branding weight.”

O’Brien at Harvard is pretty on-brand. The Brookline-born comedian went to Harvard (Class of 1985), where he earned his degree in history & literature and served as the two-term president of the Harvard Lampoon humor magazine. He delivered the university’s virtual commencement address during the pandemic in 2020. Now, fresh off his Oscars hosting gig, he can offer a sense of levity after another highly litigious year for the nation’s oldest university as it continues to battle the White House.

Winkler, the “Happy Days” actor-turned-author of “Being Henry: The Fonz . . . and Beyond,” is also returning to his alma mater (′67), where he studied acting. A fixture on the speaker circuit who often talks about his challenges with dyslexia, he’s another safe bet.

After Winkler announced his upcoming appearance on Instagram, some fellow alumni fondly remembered when the Fonz spoke at their commencement in 1995. Meanwhile, a Berkeley Beacon reporter surveyed current seniors about the choice and found a student who was really psyched for his mom, who loves the Fonz. Others recognized Winkler from “Arrested Development” and “The Waterboy.”

“Wow,” one said, “that’s big.”

Platforming famous alumni is a tried and true strategy — “proof of concept” that shows graduates their school produces success, said Sarah Rose Stack, who teaches public relations writing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

A celebrity like Duff, who has no obvious direct ties to Northeastern, is a riskier choice. In “A Cinderella Story,” she played a girl who dreams of attending Princeton, but in real life, her educational path has been anything but traditional. Some critics have questioned why the university would book a commencement speaker who recently admitted to receiving “zero education” as a child star.

At 17, Duff took online classes via Harvard Extension School and was later mocked in a Crimson spoof that called her “a loser and a chicken.” The Texas native was quick to clap back in the press: “First of all, I have a full-time job. Second, I would like to know if the thousands of other people taking online classes are chicken too, or just me?”

In many ways, Duff’s trajectory makes her particularly well-suited to speak to Northeastern graduates “precisely because Northeastern puts such an emphasis on experiential education” through co-ops and other learning experiences outside the classroom, said Meryl Alper, an associate professor in the university’s Department of Communication Studies.

A self-declared “elder millennial” who worked as a programming scheduling coordinator at the Disney Channel during the “Lizzie McGuire” era, Alper admitted she might be more enthusiastic than some in the Gen Z crowd, but she still believes that Duff has a valuable perspective to share.

“She has benefitted from celebrity and self-branding and promotional culture,” Alper said, “but surely there were some costs to those benefits, and I wonder if she might be able to reflect on those costs.”

It could be a meta moment.

In an increasingly content-oriented world, commencement speakers offer the potential to go viral long after the pomp and circumstance ends. An element of surprise never hurts. In 2024, tennis champ Roger Federer popped up behind a tree stump at Dartmouth’s commencement ceremony to serve a winning speech about failure that’s still circulating.

Still, celebrities aren’t the only ones who can mint a viral moment, Stack said. She pointed to billionaire Rob Hale, who shocked UMass Boston grads in 2023 when he handed out $1,000 to each of them, with the caveat they give half away to a good cause.

Colleges want speeches to get noticed “for the right reasons,” she said.

Smith College made headlines for the wrong ones. During commencement season last year, the women’s college drew the glare of conservative watchdogs, as well as some alumna, for inviting former US assistant secretary for health Admiral Rachel L. Levine, a transgender woman, to speak as one of four honorands. A second speaker, the late singer Evelyn Harris, gave back her honorary degree after being accused of plagiarizing part of her speech.

“I won’t claim direct correlation, but there could be a logical conclusion to draw about the debacles last year and the ‘celebrity’ factor of this year’s speakers,” said senior Olivia Petty, editor of the school newspaper, The Sophian, in an email, noting that some students would prefer to invite a more “glamorous” standalone speaker over the college tradition of honoring several.

Still, Petty said, many of her peers are “very amped” to see women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley, one of three honorands who will be speaking this May.

All commencement speakers can make a difference beyond the quad, especially when it comes to signaling the importance of diversity and inclusion, said Monique Kelley, an associate professor of the practice in public relations at Boston University’s College of Communication.

“These commencement speakers have an opportunity — regardless of what’s supported, what’s not supported, what’s legal, what’s not — to talk about what they stand for,” she said, “and really make sure their message hits everybody.”