President Joe Biden to attend Penn’s commencement Monday for granddaughter’s graduation

It won’t, however, be the first time that Biden has been on hand at a Penn commencement. In 2013, as vice president, he served as commencement speaker and received an honorary degree.

President Joe Biden, who was then vice president, waves to the crowd as he and former University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann enter Franklin Field for the university's 257th commencement exercises in 2013. Biden will be at Penn's commencement again on Monday.Read moreCLEM MURRAY / File Photo

by Susan Snyder and Julia Terruso

Published May 11, 2023, 9:19 a.m. ET

President Joe Biden on Monday is expected to attend the University of Pennsylvania’s 267th commencement, where his granddaughter Maisy will receive a degree, The Inquirer has learned.

Commencement is scheduled to take place at Franklin Field at 10:15 a.m. and will feature Idina Menzel, Tony award-winning actress and singer of Frozen fame, as the speaker.

Penn on Thursday put out an advisory announcing increased security requirements around the expected two-hour ceremony, but did not say why. The White House would not comment Wednesday on whether Biden would be attending the commencement.

It won’t, however, be the first time that Biden has been on hand at a Penn commencement. In 2013, as vice president, he was commencement speaker and received an honorary degree. He also went to a graduation ceremony at Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences in 2016, again as vice president, when his granddaughter Naomi graduated.

And he wasn’t the only national figure on hand that year. Also in 2016, Donald Trump, then a presidential candidate, was there, too, to see his daughter, Tiffany, get her degree. Security was tight for that event, too, with Penn advising parents and guests to arrive early.

Biden also visited Penn in April to see Maisy Biden’s senior art show at Charles Addams Fine Arts Gallery. Maisy is Hunter Biden’s daughter. Her older sister, Finnegan, graduated from Penn in 2021.

Penn plans to run a live webcast of the commencement, which is Liz Magill’s first as Penn president. She became president last July.

Biden has had close ties to the university, where he became a presidential practice professor in 2017 after he left the White House as vice president. The university also created a Washington-based center in his name focusing on diplomacy and global engagement. The Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement became a landing spot for many longtime Biden advisers and drew scrutiny from House Republicans earlier this year after classified documents were found in the center’s D.C. office.

Biden took a leave from Penn in 2019 when he ran for president. In 2021, he named then-Penn president Amy Gutmann to be U.S. ambassador to Germany.