Michael Bloomberg will speak at Harvard Commencement 2014

Entrepreneur (Bloomberg L.P., the financial-information and news company), civic leader (three-time mayor of New York City), and philanthropist (including gifts of $1.1 billion to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins) Michael R. Bloomberg, M.B.A. ’66, will be the principal speaker at the 363rd Commencement, on May 29. Born in Boston and raised in nearby Medford, Bloomberg returned to the area for his business degree—and has supported the Business School with a professorship and a gift for the renovated Baker Library|Bloomberg Center, both named in honor of his father, William Henry Bloomberg. He has spoken out nationally on issues such as gun control and public health; during his commencement address at Stanford last year (“no other university in the world has so profoundly shaped our modern age”), he advocated immigration reform, as a linchpin of economic growth, and same-sex marriage, as a basic civil right. Bloomberg will speak that afternoon, during Harvard Alumni Association’s annual meeting, following the Morning Exercises.