In a recent e-mail to the Connecticut College community, President Katherine Bergeron announced the selection of investigative journalist Rukmini Maria Callimachi as the keynote speaker of the College’s 98th commencement, scheduled for May 22, 2016. Callimachi was born in Romania, but fled from the country to Switzerland with her mother and grandmother when she was five, and then came to the United States when she was ten. Callimachi has earned an impressive record so far in her career. She is a two time Pulitzer Prize finalist who currently covers Islamic extremism for the New York Times, for which she wrote a series of articles called “Underwriting Jihad.” This series explored how ransoms paid by European governments became one of the main sources of funding for Al-Qaeda. Before joining the New York Times, Callimachi worked for the Associated Press as its West Africa Bureau chief from 2006-2014. She also covered the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina while working for the AP. On Callimachi, Ben Halvorsen ’16, the co-chair of the 2016 Commencement Committee said, “I don’t know what kind of speech she’s going to give, but you know it’s going to be a big one.”
The process of selecting a commencement speaker is somewhat secretive, in part to prevent the College from potentially offending any of the people who are considered for or offered the opportunity. As Halvorsen explains “You don’t want a speaker to feel like they’re your second choice. You want to be like ‘Oh yeah, you’re our number one!’” Every year in the fall, a committee is formed consisting of faculty, administrators and students in the junior class. The committee meets to make recommendations about potential commencement speakers for the next academic year’s commencement (so the committee formed for the fall of 2015 will be making recommendations for the commencement speaker in 2017 who will be the commencement speaker at the current junior class’ graduation). The students on the committee consist of the junior class president, who co-chairs the committee, and four members of the junior class who represent various interest groups on campus.
The process has been controversial in the past. The most recent controversy came a couple years ago over the selection of Louis B. Susman, former United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom, as the 2012 commencement speaker. Some students felt that Susman did not properly embody the spirit of the college, and petitioned the administration via change.org to make the selection process more transparent. This resulted in the number of students seated on the committee being increased from two to five, and the inclusion of the class president as part of the final selection process for the speaker.
The committee is briefed on potential speakers. Current college policy dictates that Connecticut College does not pay its commencement speakers to speak at the College. Speakers are awarded an honorary degree and are compensated for travel and lodging expenses. Because of this the College uses its connections to try and identify potential speakers, says Halvorsen. “One of the College researchers does all this research on alumni connections and all the other relationships the College has, so it’s like this is an alumni’s good friend, this is an alumni’s husband or something like that,” says Halvorsen.
Another method the committee uses to identify potential speakers is soliciting recommendations from the junior class via e-mail based on connections that members may have to potential speakers. However, Halvorsen notes that, “Generally those connections are kind of loose at best.”
Both Halvorsen and fellow co-chair Bonnie Wells, the secretary of Connecticut College, believe that not paying the commencement speaker actually benefits the College. “You get people who actually care. There have been some really good ones in the past. One was a really famous dude, but he was also the father of an alum, and he really spent his time doing his research about that grade, and so he made references to things that only the kids in that grade would understand and know, so he got a lot of laughs. People really appreciate that stuff,” says Halvorsen. According to Wells, most similar small liberal arts colleges have the same policy for compensating their commencement speakers.
The committee also tries to conduct outreach to the junior class. As the list of potential speakers is narrowed to people the committee thinks would be actual good choices as speakers, a poll is conducted among the junior class to see who among the possibilities they feel would make a good speaker. Halvorsen notes that unfortunately, there is often not very good turnout for the poll. He recalls being told by a college statistician to try to aim for a 50 % response rate. According to Halvorsen, “The people who have strong opinions vote, and I guess the people who don’t, don’t. The people who have strong opinions, they’re going to pick a candidate who reflects their issues, so that’s why normally you get a lot of political possibilities.” However, the poll does have an effect on the commencement speaker list. Halvorsen notes that some potential speakers who do well in the poll may have been overlooked by the committee while others who do poorly may have been favored by the committee. This can effect whether or not the committee recommends those people as speakers.
Once the committee’s work is completed at the end of the fall semester, a meeting is scheduled with senior administrators, the president of the College and the president of the junior class for sometime during the spring semester. During the meeting, the participants review the committee’s recommendations, and express their opinions to the president about the various possible speakers. Ultimately, the final decision about who the commencement speaker will be is made by the president of the college. A letter of invitation is sent to the person who is selected. By the time the College receives an acceptance it is usually the summer or fall before commencement. If the speaker accepts in the summer, he or she is not announced until the fall once students have returned to campus. •
