At a meeting with senior class leaders yesterday, President Nan Keohane announced that ABC News Chief Congressional Analyst Cokie Roberts will speak at the 1999 commencement ceremonies.
"I am very pleased that Cokie Roberts has agreed to address our graduates and their families," Keohane said. "Her thoughtful reporting and shrewd analysis of Washington politics have helped countless people gain a clearer understanding of the thoughts and actions of our nation's policymakers."
Roberts, whose son Lee graduated from the University in 1990, co-anchors the program "This Week with Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts" and often substitutes for Ted Koppel on "Nightline."
As students and political science majors at Wellesley College in the early 1960s, Keohane and Roberts never met. In fact, they never knew each other until Roberts delivered a Wellesley commencement speech while Keohane was college president.
Keohane said that the University has offered Roberts the chance to speak in the past, but she had not been able to accept.
"She was very high on the commencement committee's list." Keohane said. "She's close enough to being a contemporary Duke parent that she'll have a real perspective."
Although Justin Klein, senior class president, was not on the committee which chose the speaker, he was pleased with the announcement.
"That's a fine selection," said Klein, a Trinity senior. "This falls right in line with what's current in our culture right now."
Although Roberts is not a former President like the University's previous two commencement speakers, as the daughter of Louisiana congressman Hale Boggs, Roberts was born into the Washington political culture. When her father died in a plane crash, her mother Lindy Boggs took over his seat in Congress. Boggs now serves as the United States ambassador to the Vatican.
Roberts' journalism breakthrough came at National Public Radio, where she served as a congressional correspondent for 10 years. At NPR, where she now works as a senior news analyst, Roberts won the Edward R. Murrow Award, the highest honor in public broadcasting. She was also the first broadcast journalist to win the Everett McKinley Dickson Award for coverage of Congress and landed an Emmy in 1991 for a piece on Ross Perot.
Currently, Roberts co-authors a weekly syndicated newspaper column with her husband Steve Roberts, a professor at George Washington University and a former New York Times writer. Earlier this year, she wrote a book titled We Are Our Mothers' Daughters, currently in its 21st week on the New York Times best-seller list.
Trinity senior Jeri Powell, Duke Student Government president, was also present at the meeting.
"Cokie Roberts is highly respected in her field and is a great role model, particularly for women," said Powell. "Personally, I am very excited that she has agreed to come."
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