Harvard once again taps CNN staff to address its students with the news that former CNN host Soledad O’Brien will address graduating Harvard students at Class Day on May 29, the day preceding commencement. Oprah Winfrey will be the commencement speaker, who follows 2012 speaker Fareed Zakaria of CNN.
O’Brien attended Harvard for three years before pulling out in 1988, during her senior year. She returned twelve years later to finish her degree.
O’Brien’s exit from CNN followed “some of the worst ratings in cable history” and a particularly memorable incident when interviewing Breitbart’s Joel Pollak regarding Critical Race Theory. At the time, there was the question if producers had to bail out O’Brien on the definition mid-interview through her earpiece after she haltingly spoke the word-for-word Wikipedia definition on air.
Last year, the student-led committee that chooses Class Day speakers selected Cong. Barney Frank (D-MA) and comedian Adam Samberg to jointly address the students. Other speakers over the past decade or so have included fellow CNN employee Christiane Amanpour, Ben Bernanke, Bill Clinton, and Al Franken.
At least the selections made by Harvard’s undergraduate Senior Class Committee afford the rest of us clear insight into how the result of four years at the Ivy League institution.
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