Samantha Power is the guest speaker for IU's undergraduate commencement ceremony May 4, IU announced Thursday in a press release. Power was the youngest U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and was special assistant to former President Obama.
Tom Linebarger is the commencement speaker for the 2019 graduate commencement ceremony May 3. Linebarger is the chairman and CEO of Cummins, a Fortune 150 technology company in Columbus, Indiana. Linebarger became chairman and CEO in 2012.
Power will return to IU after giving the keynote address at last year's America's Role in the World Conference. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for her book "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide" and was named one of Time’s “100 Most Influential People” in 2004. She began her career as a journalist, reporting in places around the world such as Bosnia and Sudan. She is now a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Law School.
IU will award several honorary degrees at the graduations ceremonies as well. Power will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. John Shoemaker, chairman of the board at Extreme Networks, Inc., and Sue Talbot, founder of Hoosiers for Higher Education will also receive the honorary degree. The honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree will be presented to seven other recipients at other IU campuses.
“We are honored to award a number of exceptional leaders with distinguished careers in business, public service, health care and education with honorary degrees,” IU President Michael McRobbie said in the release.
