Katie Ledecky Awarded Honorary Diploma from Yale University

During the 325th graduation on Monday, 14-time Olympic medalist Katie Ledecky was awarded an honorary diploma by Yale University, one of many highest honors the college confers.

Since 1702, the board of trustees at Yale has chosen recipients of those honorary levels. This 12 months’s recipients embody Ledecky, Columnist Kwame Anthony Appiah, anesthesiologist Emery Brown, Canadian activist Ingrid Mattson, playwright and professor Lynn Nottage, political scientist Robert Putnam, former Baltimore mayor Kurt Schmoke, and medical researcher JoAnne Stubbe.

According to a report from Yale, these honorary levels are awarded to “preeminent individuals in the arts, science, philosophy, athletics, and public service.”

Ledecky and fellow recipients be part of an extended and distinguished record of notable figures to have acquired an Honorary diploma from one of many oldest Universities on the earth. That consists of the likes of Benjamin Franklin, Hillary Clinton, Willie Mays, Meryl Streep, and Elizabeth Blackburn, amongst many others.

Ledecky grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, which is about 300 miles southwest of Yale’s campus in New Haven, Connecticut.

Ledecky is not any stranger to excessive honors, having beforehand been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2024 (the one swimmer ever to win the award), twice being named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the 12 months (2017 and 2022), on prime of a embellished medal haul that features 14 Olympic medals (Nine gold), 23 long-course world championship titles, and eight NCAA Championship titles along with her time at Stanford, the place she graduated in 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts in psychology and a minor in political science.

She additionally served because the graduation speaker at her alma mater in 2025, changing into the youngest graduation speaker within the University’s historical past. Her speech included a recollection of her 800 freestyle race on the 2012 London Olympics, the race that gained Ledecky her first profession Olympic Gold on the age of 15.

Earlier this month, fellow American Swimming legend and multiple-time Olympic teammate of Ledecky, Michael Phelps, was honored with an honorary doctorate from the University of Michigan.