Zuckerberg sheds tears and gets political in Harvard commencement speech

The Harvard dropout's address wa
 By 
Patrick Kulp
 on 
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Mark Zuckerberg shed tears, threw shade, and got (mildly) political in a commencement speech to his alma mater on Thursday.

The Facebook CEO and Harvard dropout touched on everything from income inequality to Beyonce to Donald Trump (though he danced around referring to the president by name).

Fresh off a cross-country road trip of staged meet-and-greets, the billionaire seemed genuinely excited to return to the school where he first conceived of Facebook.

"If I get through this speech, it'll be the first time I actually finish something at Harvard," Zuckerberg said.

Before imparting any wisdom to the class of 2017, though, Zuck wanted to set the record straight on a few things regarding The Social Network, the Aaron Sorkin movie that unflatteringly dramatized his time at the college.

"That movie made it seem like [Facebook predecessor] Facemash was so important to creating Facebook," he said. "It wasn't."

He got in another dig at his Hollywood portrayal later in the speech.

"No one writes formulas on glass," he said. "That's not a thing."

Zuckerberg tried for the nth time to shut down speculation that he's mulling a presidential run earlier this week.

That didn't stop him from regaling graduates with campaign-ready anecdotes from his recent great American road trip.

Zuckerberg seemed most moved by a story he told about an undocumented student mentee. Recounting the uncertainty the high schooler felt about the future, he teared up in a rare public display of emotion.

Immigration was one of several political issues on which Zuck opined. He pushed for exploring a universal basic income — a policy stance in vogue right now for Silicon Valley moguls — and warned of a future of automation.

And what's a tech think-fluencer speech these days without some veiled Trump disses.

Interspersed among the weightier topics was some Beyonce fandom.

Of course, there were some Facebook plugs — specifically the company's much-trumpeted community compact a.k.a the Zuckerberg manifesto.

The rows of ceremony higher-ups flanking Zuckerberg, whose fashion sense was dated by a century or two for the occasion, didn't escape anyone's notice.

Besides all that, there was plenty of boilerplate commencement speech fare to go around.

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Patrick Kulp

Patrick Kulp is a Business Reporter at Mashable. Patrick covers digital advertising, online retail and the future of work. A graduate of UC Santa Barbara with a degree in political science and economics, he previously worked at the Pacific Coast Business Times.

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