Distinguished leaders from politics, business, law, literature, entertainment, sports and the civil rights movement will deliver commencement addresses to this year’s graduating college and university students. Here’s a list of some of the notable minority commencement speakers for 2015:
Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick will serve as the main commencement speaker at Harvard University’s 364th Commencement on May 28. Patrick served two terms as the Bay State’s chief executive and won plaudits for his handling of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing’s aftermath.
Longtime civil rights leader and U.S. Rep. John Lewis will address Hampton University’s 145th graduating class on May 10. Lewis is often called “one of the most courageous persons the Civil Rights Movement ever produced.” Lewis will also be the commencement speaker for Elms College, which holds its graduation ceremony May 16.
Claremont McKenna College’s Class of 2015 will hear from Iranian-born writer Azar Nafisi at their May 16 commencement. Nafisi is the author of the international bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books and a professor at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C.
Megan Smith, chief technology officer of the United States and an assistant to President Obama, will send off graduates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s 2015 Commencement exercises on June 5. The former vice president of new business development at Google, Smith earned two degrees from MIT.
Tulane University’s 2015 graduates will get to hear actress and comedian Maya Rudolph deliver the keynote commencement address on May 16. Rudolph rose to fame as a cast member of the long-running Saturday Night Live
sketch comedy series.
