Keynote Speaker

Samantha Power, Pulitzer Prize winning Author, Journalist, Lawyer, and Human Rights Activist has been selected by the senior class as this year's Keynote speaker.

Power is The Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Her book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction, the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award for general non-fiction, and the Council on Foreign Relations' Arthur Ross Prize for the best book in US foreign policy. Power’s New Yorker article on the horrors in Darfur, Sudan, won the 2005 National Magazine Award for best reporting.

Power was the founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy (1998-2002). From 1993-1996, she covered the wars in the former Yugoslavia as a reporter for the USNews & World Report, The Boston Globe, and The Economist. Power is the editor, with Graham Allison, of Realizing Human Rights: Moving from Inspiration to Impact. A graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School, she moved to the United States from Ireland at the age of nine. She spent 2005-06 working in the office of Senator Barack Obama and recently released a political biography of the UN's Sergio Vieira de Mello, entitled Chasing the Flame.

Senior Class Speaker

If you are interested in being considered as the class speaker at commencement, you are invited to prepare the text of your proposed speech and submit it to the Office of the President (Broad Center 204) by Monday, MARCH 3, 2008. The speech must be an original work. Your text must be typed, double-spaced and take no longer than five minutes to present. Make certain your name and telephone number are on the document. A special committee comprised of students, faculty and staff will judge the speech presentations at a speech try-out in Avery Auditorium. Your try-out speech must match the text you submit. A date for the try-outs will be determined soon. The Senior Class Speaker will be announced shortly after judging.

For more information please contact Andrea Olson, Commencement Coordinator, at 909-607-2690.