April 21, 2008

Speakers set for ’08 commencement

BY SALLY ACHARYA


From left, Sylvia Earle, Vernon Jordan Jr., Stephen Breyer, and Kenneth Paulson

This year’s commencement speakers are as varied and intellectually adventurous as AU itself. The graduates of 2008 will be hearing from a Supreme Court justice, the editor of USA Today, an influential figure in politics and civil rights, and an intrepid explorer of the ocean deep.           

Sylvia Earle will bring her sense of adventure in pursuit of knowledge to the commencement ceremony of the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS). She has walked across the ocean floor, followed whales, investigated sunken battleships, and lived undersea for two weeks with a team of four other women. Dubbed “Her Deepness” by the New Yorker, called a “Living Legend” by the Library of Congress, and named by Time magazine as its first Hero for the Planet in 1998, the oceanographer and National Geographic explorer in residence will be at CAS to launch new graduates on their own voyages of discovery. Earle will also be awarded an honorary doctor of science.

Vernon Jordan Jr., who has excelled in public affairs and business, will address graduates of the School of Public Affairs and Kogod School of Business. Jordan began his career as a civil rights lawyer in Georgia in the 1960s, defending the rights of African American students to attend college and rising to prominent positions that included executive director of the United Negro College Fund and president of the National Urban League.

In the Clinton White House, Jordan served as a chairman of the presidential transition team; more recently, he was a member of the Iraq Study Group. He is also a prominent attorney and director of one of the world’s most prominent financial advisory and asset management firms, Lazard Ltd and Lazard Group. He’ll also receive an honorary doctor of public service.

At the Washington College of Law, the address will be given by Justice Stephen Breyer. Appointed to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton in 1994, he has been seen as an intellectual counterweight to conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. On the bench, he has generally sided with the liberal bloc, along with justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter, and John Paul Stevens.

He is the author of a book, Active Liberty: Interpreting our Democratic Constitution, that argues in favor of viewing the Constitution as a flexible document with a dynamic meaning that can change over time, rather than adhering strictly to the intent of the founders at the time of writing. He’ll be awarded an honorary doctor of laws.

All three of those speakers are newsmakers, and few people know the news better than Kenneth Paulson, editor of USA Today, who will give the address at the School of Communication and School of International Service.

Paulson was among the journalists who founded USA Today in 1982, and managed newsrooms at papers around the country before returning to the Gannett flagship paper. He has been its editor since 2004, and is also editor of USAToday.com.

He is widely known for his advocacy for educating Americans about the First Amendment, and has long pushed for tougher confidential sourcing policies and ethics guidelines. An early advocate of making newspapers available online, he launched online newspapers in Florida and New York in 1993. He’ll be awarded an honorary doctor of letters.

The commencement ceremonies are on Sunday, May 11, and Sunday, May 18. The schedule is as follows:

 MORE NEWS