This year’s guest speaker for the Baccalaureate Commencement on May 16 will be best-selling author Mitch Albom.
The Baccalaureate Ceremony is an interfaith program that includes music, readings, prayers and a guest speaker.
Albom is an American author, journalist, screenwriter, dramatist, radio and television broadcaster and musician. His books, The Five People You Meet in Heaven and Tuesdays with Morrie, have sold over 28 million copies worldwide.
He was selected to be this year’s speaker because he has “a track record of bringing interfaith issues into the general conversation,” according to University Chaplain Chaz Howard.
“[Albom’s] latest book brings about a strong interfaith conversation between the author and members of the clergy that was extremely powerful,” Howard said.
University Secretary Leslie Kruhly added that Albom is “a perfect choice for Baccalaureate speaker.”
“Not only has he written very powerfully and extensively about moral life, faith and the human spirit, but he also exemplifies how to incorporate those beliefs into daily life,” Kruhly wrote in an e-mail.
Wharton senior Hartej Khangura is “anticipating he’ll be a pretty good speaker at Commencement.”
“If the Chaplain’s office made the selection, I have faith that they made a good choice,” Khangura said.
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