Tom Brokaw will deliver the main address at the 2005 Dartmouth Commencement. Read the official Dartmouth news release.
In all seriousness though, my first reaction is that this is much better than having General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, last year's speaker. Brokaw has had a remarkable career in journalism and will surely have some interesting things to say.
We'll likely have more thoughts on this to come, as I take the matter of who speaks at my graduation pretty seriously.
I thought Immelt was great, and I was very pleased to have him as the speaker at my graduation. I've seen a newscaster give a commencement address before (Rather, at Colgate) and his wasn't nearly as good as Immelt was. Maybe Rather will be better. I think it would have been a lot cooler, however, to hear what Dr. Norman Borlaug would have had to say, as he singlehandedly saved millions and millions of lives.
ReplyDeleteAs a quick aside - at the same graduation that Rather spoke at, Paul Tagliabue (Commissioner of the NFL) received an honorary degree. I seriously spent most of the time after Rather's speach speaking about how much cooler it would have been to have Tagliabue give the commencement address.
Okay, let's get this straight. . . .
ReplyDeleteJeff Immelt is the leader of General Electric, a company with a market cap of near 400 billion dollars, 300,000 employees, and its hand in everything from aircraft engines to Fear Factor. He's also a Dartmouth graduate.
Tom Brokaw has read a scripted newscast from a teleprompter for the past two decades.
Explain to me why Tom Brokaw is potentially more interesting?
I don't like businessmen.
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