Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III briefs the press from the Pentagon Briefing Room, Washington, D.C., Feb. 19, 2021. (Jackie Sanders/U.S. Air Force)
(Tribune News Service) — U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III will deliver the keynote speech during the U.S. Naval Academy graduation and commissioning ceremony later this month, the Pentagon announced Monday.
Austin is scheduled to address the Class of 2023 at 10 a.m. May 26 at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium.
The ceremony is open to invited guests only. The proceedings will be livestreamed on Facebook and YouTube. Most of the roughly 1,000 midshipmen from the 2023 graduating class will be commissioned as officers in the Navy or Marine Corps.
The graduate and faculty procession will begin at 9 a.m. with the ceremony starting at 10 a.m., according to the academy’s Commissioning Week schedule. The Blue Angels are scheduled for a flyover at 10:04 a.m. The flight demonstration squadron will be practicing and performing on the days leading up to the ceremony.
Austin was sworn in as Pentagon chief on Jan. 22, 2021.
The 69-year-old retired four-star general served more than 40 years in the military with responsibilities for Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Syria. Austin held the job from 2013 until his retirement in 2016.
Born in Mobile, Alabama, in 1953, Austin was raised in Thomasville, Georgia. He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1975. He also holds master’s degrees in education and business management and is a graduate of the Army War College.
After being commissioned as a second lieutenant upon graduation from West Point, Austin’s career took him to assignments across the U.S., Europe and the Middle East. In 2012, President Barack Obama nominated Austin to become the commander of Central Command.
President Joe Biden delivered the graduation keynote speech last year. In his first visit to the academy as president, Biden urged the Naval Academy’s Class of 2022 to defend the country in a rousing graduation speech that began with a series of inside jokes and ended with a grave sense of global foreboding.
The keynote typically rotates between the vice president, president and the secretary of defense.
The last secretary of defense to speak at graduation was Mark Esper in 2020 when the ceremony was held virtually because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at the ceremony last year.
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