For event details, visit the Spring Commencement Web site.

10 a.m., March 26, 2009----Thomas L. Friedman, internationally acclaimed author and foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times, will speak at the University of Delaware's 160th Commencement exercises, scheduled at 9 a.m., Saturday, May 30, in Delaware Stadium on the Newark campus, UD President Patrick Harker has announced.

The outdoor ceremony, which is held rain or shine, is open to the public.

“Thomas Friedman is one of the most respected journalists of this generation and we are delighted that he has accepted our invitation to address Delaware graduates, their families and friends at the 2009 Commencement exercises,” Harker said. “Friedman is exceptionally adept at taking complex issues and making them comprehensible.”

Friedman has won three Pulitzer Prizes, covering many of the most important stories throughout recent decades, and has been called by Vanity Fair “the country's best newspaper columnist.”

He is the author of the new book Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution - And How It Can Renew America, which is a New York Times bestseller.

Friedman's previous book, The World is Flat, has sold more than two million copies. His other bestsellers include Longitudes and Attitudes: The World in the Age of Terrorism, The Lexus and the Olive Tree and From Beirut to Jerusalem, which at many universities is used as a basic text on the Middle East.

At the Commencement ceremony, Friedman will receive an honorary degree from the University, along with Carol E. Hoffecker, a University of Delaware alumna and longtime faculty member who retired as Richards Professor of History; Baroness Susan A. Greenfield, one of Britain's best-known scientists and an expert on the human mind; Charles R. E. Lewis, a University of Delaware alumnus who is a bestselling author, investigative journalist and professor and founding executive director of the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University in Washington, D.C.; and David Satcher, noted physician and public health administrator who served as the 16th Surgeon General of the United States.

The Honorary Degree Class of 2009

Thomas L. Friedman

Friedman is a native of Minnesota who received a bachelor's degree from Brandeis University, spending semesters abroad at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the American University in Cairo. He attended St. Antony's College, Oxford University, on a Marshall Scholarships and received a master's degree in modern Middle East studies.

Friedman joined the London bureau of United Press International, and then was dispatched to Beirut as a correspondent. He joined the staff of The New York Times in 1981, becoming Beirut bureau chief and later Israel bureau chief. While there, he received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship to write a book about his reflections, From Beirut to Jerusalem. During this period, he won two Pulitzer Prizes.

Friedman was named chief diplomatic correspondent of the Times in 1989, moving to Washington, D.C. He won a third Pulitzer in 2002 for his evenhanded assessments of the post-Sept. 11 world.

In 2004 Friedman was awarded the Overseas Press Club Award for lifetime achievement as well as the honorary title, Order of the British Empire (OBE), by Queen Elizabeth II. The Wall Street Journal ranked Friedman the second most influential business thinker in 2008 and U.S News and World Report named him one of “America's Best Leaders.”

Friedman appears in his own segment, “Tom's Journal,” on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and is a frequent guest on programs such as Face the Nation and Charlie Rose.

Carol E. Hoffecker

Hoffecker is a graduate of the University of Delaware who went on to graduate school at Radcliffe College and Harvard University. She taught at Northeastern University and Sweet Briar College before returning to her native state as a resident scholar at the Hagley Museum. She joined the UD faculty full-time in 1973.

While at UD, Hoffecker served as president of the Faculty Senate, chairperson of the Department of History and associate provost for graduate studies, in addition to her duties in teaching and research.

She is the author of several books, including Wilmington, Delaware, Portrait of an Industrial City: 1830-1900; Brandywine Village, Corporate Capital: Wilmington in the 20th Century; Delaware: A Bicentennial History; Beneath Thy Guiding Hand: A History of Women at the University of Delaware; Familiar Relations: The du Ponts and the University of Delaware; Honest John Williams: U.S. Senator from Delaware; Federal Justice in the First State, and Delaware, The First State, for school-aged children.

Baroness Susan A. Greenfield

Baroness Greenfield is one of the world's preeminent experts on neuroscience and brain research, and serves as director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain.

She earned a doctorate in pharmacology from Oxford University and since 1996 has been a professor of pharmacology and researcher at the university, where has developed a multidisciplinary approach to exploring novel neuronal mechanisms in the brain that are common to regions affected in both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. The basic theme of her research is to develop strategies to arrest neuronal death in these disorders.

She is co-founder of Synaptica Ltd., which specializes in novel approaches to neurodegeneration, and has written extensively on the brain. In 1995 she published Journey to the Centres of the Mind, which looked at consciousness. That was followed in 2000 by The Private Life of the Brain and the BBC2 series Brain Story. Greenfield also is author of Tomorrow's People: How 21st-Century Technology is Changing the Way We Think and Feel.

Baroness Greenfield has been awarded the Michael Faraday Medal by the Royal Society and was elected to an honorary fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians.

Charles R. E. Lewis

Lewis is a political science graduate of the University of Delaware who went on to earn a master's degree from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

An investigative journalist and bestselling author, Lewis had a successful career as a producer with 60 Minutes when he left to become founder and executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization in Washington, D.C.

Lewis received a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, also known as the genius award and in 1999 was UD's Winter Commencement speaker. He has held appointments at Princeton University and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and was a consultant to the Carter Center.

He is president and chief executive officer of the Fund for Independence in Journalism, which was created to foster high-quality reporting, and is distinguished journalist in residence and professor of journalism at American University.

David Satcher

Dr. Satcher was the 16th surgeon general of the United States and served simultaneously in the positions of surgeon general and assistant secretary for health from February 1998 through January 2001. He also held the posts of director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry from 1993 to 1998.

Before joining the Administration, Dr. Satcher was president of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn., from 1982 to 1993. He is a former member of the faculty of the UCLA School of Medicine and Public Health and the Martin Luther King/Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles.

He has received top awards from the American Medical Association, the American College of Physicians and the American Academy of Family Physicians. He was presented the Breslow Award in Public Health, the New York Academy of Medicine Lifetime Achievement Award, the Bennie Mays Trailblazer Ward and the Jimmy and Roslyn Carter Award of Humanitarian Contributions to the health of Humankind from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.

Dr. Satcher is a graduate of Morehouse College and Case Western Reserve University.

Commencement information

Graduates and their guests should plan to arrive at Delaware Stadium no later than 8 a.m.

College and departmental Convocation ceremonies will be held at indoor locations across campus following Commencement.

For more on spring Commencement, see the Web site.