Commencement: Who’s got the best speakers?
By: Jeff Dufour and Kiki Ryan
Washington Examiner
04/06/09 12:05 AM EDT
Caps and gowns
Much of the news over college commencements this year has centered on the controversy over Notre Dame’s decision to invite President Barack Obama to give its annual address this spring. But lost in the shuffle are a whole panoply of speakers with ties to Washington or politics who are set to give the graduation addresses at some of the country’s top schools.
» Gen. David Petraeus will address graduates at Princeton as well as the Virginia Military Institute. The former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq received his Ph.D. from Princeton.
» Speaker Nancy Pelosi will give the commencement address at Johns Hopkins University, near where she grew up in Baltimore.
» Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has degrees from both Wellesley and Yale, will speak to graduates at New York University and Barnard College.
» Although he never graduated from college, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe will give the talk at Cornell University.
» Stanford grads will hear from Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.
» Presidential historian and frequent D.C. talking head Doris Kearns Goodwin will give the commencement address at Vanderbilt University.
» Eric Schmidt, who grew up in Washington before going on to become chief executive officer of Google, will speak at the University of Pennsylvania.
» Longtime NBC anchor Tom Brokaw will give the address at William & Mary, as well as at Fordham University.
» The University of Virginia brings 4th Circuit Court Judge Harvie Wilkinson III to speak. He graduated from U.Va. in 1972.
» Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, a friend and early backer of the president, will speak to graduates at both MIT and Tufts in his home state.
» Keeping it in state, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will speak to University of Southern California grads.
Among local schools, Marymount University will hear from PBS correspondent Gwen Ifill. Trinity grads will listen to Maggie Williams, a ’77 graduate of the school who went on to be then-first lady Clinton’s chief of staff and a key adviser to her presidential campaign. McLean resident Steve Case, the former CEO of AOL-Time Warner, will address the class at George Mason.
And, last but not least, as previously reported, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has been tapped to speak at the George Washington University graduation on the Mall. And first lady Michelle Obama will speak at the University of California, Merced’s, first-ever graduating class.
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