Gwen Ifill: Quadrupling-up on commencements
Posted by: Juliana Brint in News, Vox Populi, tags: Class of 2009, Commencement Speakers, Gwen Ifill
Sorry, College Seniors, she’s four-timing you
College seniors were probably feeling pretty special when they found out last week that their commencement speaker was going to be “News Hour with Jim Lehrer” star and vice presidential debate moderator Gwen Ifill. Well, fishbowlDC just released a list of where prominent D.C. journalists are delivering commencement addresses and it turns out Ifill will be headlining no fewer than four commencement ceremonies, including Howard University’s and Marymount University’s.
To a certain extent, doubling-up is common among commencement speakers (hey, if you’ve got a speech written, what’s the harm in delivering it to a few thousand more fresh-faced 22 year-olds?), but quadrupling up? And hitting up three schools in the same metropolitan area? That’s pushing it.
When you add to that the fact that the School of Foreign Service speaker, former Senator Chuck Hagel, is going to be a Georgetown professor next year and that the McDonough School of Business speaker, Luis Alberto Moreno, has a daughter attending Georgetown, it makes you feel like perhaps the University didn’t put that much effort into choosing its speakers this year…
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Not to be the kind of commenter who suggests post ideas when he could track the info down himself, but…why not interview whoever’s in charge of getting commencement speakers and find out why they were so lazy this year?
[...] is taking some time off from his newfound Twitter passion to head out to Doha (and to think we were miffed about sharing Gwen [...]