WATERVILLE, Maine — Arianna Huffington, co-founder of the Huffington Post, will deliver the commencement address at Colby College’s 195th commencement on Sunday, May 22, the school announced Wednesday.
In addition to Huffington, Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor to President Barack Obama, will speak to Colby seniors at the college’s baccalaureate the previous day. Both will receive honorary doctoral degrees, as will president and CEO of the Jackson Laboratory Edison T. Liu and winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics Lars Peter Hansen.
“This year’s cohort of honorary degree recipients offers our graduates yet another example of the tremendous impact of scholarship and service on society’s most complex issues,” said Colby President David A. Greene. “We look forward to honoring these four individuals as well as the accomplished members of Colby’s Class of 2016.”
Huffington, who is the author of 15 books, was named to Time magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people and the Forbes list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women. She is widely considered a digital media pioneer, having co-founded the Pulitzer Prize-winning Huffington Post and overseen its rise to become one of the most widely read, linked to, and frequently cited media brands on the Internet. Huffington is a frequent commentator on politics and world affairs, and her most recent book, “Thrive,” debuted at the top of the New York Times bestseller list.
Hansen is an internationally known leader in economic dynamics who works at the boundary of economics and statistics. His groundbreaking work has been transformative for the fields of econometrics, finance and macroeconomics and for understanding uncertainties in markets. Hansen is the David Rockefeller Distinguished Service Professor in Economics and Statistics at the University of Chicago and director of the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics, and he was a recipient of the 2013 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.