Presidential Historian Michael Beschloss to Give Commencement Address at Allegheny College

Honorary Degrees Also to Be Awarded to Wayne State University President and to EEOC Commissioner

April 25, 2016 – Michael Beschloss — presidential historian for NBC News, commentator for PBS NewsHour and nationally renowned author — will deliver the Commencement address at Allegheny College in the college’s 201st year. The ceremony will begin at 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 14.

The author of nine critically acclaimed books, Beschloss co-authored with Caroline Kennedy the #1 New York Times best seller “Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy.” He is currently working on a history of American presidents in wartime from James Madison to George W. Bush. Beschloss himself has been called a national treasure.

In addition to his work on NBC and PBS, Beschloss created and hosted the Discovery Channel series “Decisions That Shook the World,” for which he won an Emmy Award in 2005.

He has been a historian on the staff of the Smithsonian Institution, a senior associate member at Oxford University and a senior fellow of the Annenberg Foundation.

Sharing the stage with Beschloss and Allegheny College President James H. Mullen Jr. will be two Allegheny alumni who will also be awarded honorary degrees.

Attorney Victoria A. Lipnic, who graduated from Allegheny College in 1982, has served since 2010 as a commissioner on the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the premier federal agency responsible for enforcement of the nation’s anti-discrimination laws in employment. A nationally recognized expert on employment and workforce policy and law, Lipnic also served, from 2002 to 2009, as the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment Standards. In that position she oversaw a number of agencies that affect the daily working lives of citizens.

A 1976 graduate of Allegheny, M. Roy Wilson is president of Wayne State University, where he has realigned the university’s research divisions to emphasize team science and developed a strategy to improve the pipeline of underrepresented students toward science careers. Prior to joining Wayne State, Wilson served as deputy director for strategic scientific planning and program coordination at the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities of the National Institutes of Health. His own medical research has focused on glaucoma and blindness in populations from the Caribbean to West Africa.

The Commencement ceremony on May 14 will take place on historic Bentley Hall lawn, weather permitting. Tickets are required for admission only if the ceremony is held indoors in the Wise Center.