The Class Day speaker for 2010 will be CNN's Christiane Amanpour, the administration and the Senior Class Committee announced today. Harvard College seniors' class day will fall on Wednesday, May 26, this year, beginning at 2:00 p.m., in Tercentenary Theatre.
Amanpour, a veteran international reporter who broke new ground for female journalists, is now CNN's chief international correspondent and hosts a daily 30-minute interview show, Amanpour. She has won nine Emmy awards and has several times been named one of the world's 100 most powerful women by Forbes magazine. An alumna of the University of Rhode Island, she has worked at CNN since 1983, covering the first Persian Gulf War and the Bosnian war, and more recently, reporting from Rwanda, Iraq, Afghanistan, and New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She has interviewed a long list of world leaders, including Mohammad Khatami and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran (where she lived as a child), Yasser Arafat, and Robert Mugabe.
A notice from Nworah Ayogu ’10, the graduating class's first marshal, included a link to a YouTube video announcing the choice of Amanpour and giving information on her background. The official announcement appears here.
