Christopher John Matthews is an American political commentator, retired talk show host, and author. Matthews hosted his weeknight hour-long talk show, Hardball with Chris Matthews, on America's Talking and later on MSNBC, from 1997 until March 2, 2020. He announced on his final episode that he was retiring, following an accusation that he had made inappropriate comments to a Hardball guest four years earlier. On that occasion, he stated: "The younger generation's out there ready to take the reins. We see them in politics, in media, in fighting for their causes. They're improving the workplace."
Valedictorian (VD) is an academic title for the highest-performing student of a graduating class of an academic institution.
Anna Marie Quindlen is an American author, journalist, and opinion columnist.
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton is an American politician and diplomat who served as the 67th United States secretary of state in the administration of Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a U.S. senator representing New York from 2001 to 2009, and as the first lady of the U.S. to president Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party, she was the party's nominee in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, becoming the first woman to win a presidential nomination by a major U.S. political party and the first woman to win the popular vote for U.S. president.
James George Stavridis is a retired United States Navy admiral and vice chair, global affairs, and a managing director-partner of The Carlyle Group, a global investment firm, and chair of the board of trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation. Stavridis serves as the chief international diplomacy and national security analyst for NBC News in New York. He is also chair emeritus of the board of directors of the United States Naval Institute and a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
Jonathan Edward Favreau is an American political commentator, podcaster, and the former director of speechwriting for President Barack Obama.
The 2016 United States presidential election was the 58th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 2016. The Republican ticket, businessman Donald Trump and Indiana governor Mike Pence defeated the Democratic ticket of former secretary of state and First Lady of the United States Hillary Clinton and the junior senator from Virginia, Tim Kaine, in what was considered one of the biggest political upsets in American history. It was also the sixth presidential election in which both major party candidates were registered in the same home state; the others have been in 1860, 1904, 1920, 1940, and 1944.
Central Connecticut State University's annual undergraduate commencement exercises are held on campus each May. From 1989 to 2016, separate graduation ceremonies were held for recipients of postgraduate degrees. Additional midyear undergraduate commencements were held at the end of the fall terms from 1988 to 1993 and at several other points in the university's history, most recently in 2022.
Deborah Bial is an American businesswoman. She is the founder and president of the Posse Foundation and a trustee of Brandeis University.
Eleanor Dean Acheson is an American lawyer who served as Assistant Attorney General of the United States for the Office of Policy Development as part of the Clinton administration.
This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life is an essay by David Foster Wallace. The text originates from a commencement speech Wallace gave at Kenyon College on May 21, 2005. The essay was published in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006 and in 2009 its format was stretched by Little, Brown and Company to fill 138 pages for a book publication. A transcript of the speech circulated online as early as June 2005.
Jonathan Ira Lovett is an American podcaster, comedian, and former speechwriter. Lovett is a co-founder of Crooked Media, along with fellow former White House staffers during the Obama administration, Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor. Lovett is a regular host of the Crooked Media podcasts Pod Save America and Lovett or Leave It. As a speechwriter, he worked for President Barack Obama as well as for Hillary Clinton when she was a United States senator and a 2008 presidential candidate. Lovett also co-created the NBC sitcom 1600 Penn, and was a writer and producer on the third season of HBO's The Newsroom.
The Shuping Yang commencement speech controversy took place following a commencement speech made by Shuping Yang, a Chinese undergraduate student graduating from the University of Maryland (UMD), on May 21, 2017. The speech, which praised freedom of speech and democracy, drew the ire of Chinese netizens, state media, as well as the Chinese Students and Scholars Association at the University of Maryland.
The Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs is an international studies institute based at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. The Albright Institute was established by former United States Secretary of State and Wellesley College alumna Madeleine Albright in 2009 to support the interdisciplinary study of global issues within a liberal arts framework.
Subsequent to her loss of the 2016 United States presidential election, Hillary Clinton retired from electoral politics and has since engaged in a number of activities.
The first commencement at Columbia University was held on June 21, 1758, when the university, then known as King's College, conferred seven degrees upon its first graduating class. Today, the university graduates several thousand students each year from its several undergraduate colleges, graduate schools, and affiliated institutions. University Commencement traditionally takes place on the third Wednesday of May.
