CU Invites Prominent Speakers for Graduation

Graduates from Columbia-affiliated schools will be putting the finishing touches on the University experience this week when they go to their school's commencement ceremonies. There, they will hear a variety of speakers selected by their schools to give them guidance upon leaving the walls of academia.

Columbia College invited National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern, Law '66, to speak to graduates on South Field Lawn yesterday. In addition to being commissioner since 1984, Stern is the chair of the 24-member Columbia University Board of Trustees.

Mamphela Ramphele was the keynote speaker at Barnard College's commencement. Ramphele is currently the managing director of the World Bank, overseeing the Bank's involvement in health, education, and technology issues. Dr. Ramphele started her career in the 1970s as a student activist in the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa. She has also worked as a medical doctor, civil rights leader, community development worker, academic researcher, and a university administrator--she was the first Black woman .

Graduates from the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science heard from Jeffrey Bleustein, CEO of Harley-Davidson, Inc., on South Lawn. In addition to leading the largest U.S.-based motorcycle manufacturer, Bleustein is also an adviser to President Bush. On April 5, Bush appointed Bleustein to the President's Council on the 21st Century Workforce, a council of industry and labor leaders who work with the Department of Labor to advise the president on industry-related issues.

School of General Studies graduates heard from Roger Pilon this afternoon in Roone Arledge auditorium at their graduation ceremony. Pilon founded the Center for Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute, a non-profit public policy research foundation headquartered in Washington, D.C., in 1989 and has served as director since its founding. In 2001, the School of General Studies honored Pilon with its Alumni Medal of Distinction.

The School of International and Public Affairs hosted New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Bloomberg, who received an MBA from Harvard, launched Bloomberg, L.P., and in 1990, he modernized the relationship between business and media, when Bloomberg L.P. introduced a news service, which was followed by radio, television, online, and publishing endeavors. This fall, Bloomberg made the crossover to public service, succeeding former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

The School of the Arts welcomed Calvin Trillin at Miller Theatre at 2 p.m. Trillin, a staff writer for the New Yorker since 1963, is well-known for "U.S.," a series of articles in the New Yorker that he wrote from a different U.S. location every three weeks. Trillin is the author of numerous books ranging from non-fiction like his account of the integration of the University of Georgia to collections of poetry.

Commencement exercises at the School of Journalism were headlined by Paul Steiger, managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, in Roone Arledge Auditorium yesterday. Steiger, under whose leadership the Wall Street Journal won 10 Pulitzer prizes in the past ten years, serves as a member of the prestigious Pulitzer Prize selection committee.