David Remnick, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, will deliver the commencement address next month for the 2022 graduating class of Rutgers University-New Brunswick and Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences.
The Board of Governors choose Remnick on Friday as its commencement speaker at its 256th commencement ceremony, to be held May 15. The Hackensack native will also be awarded an honorary doctor of letters degree.
“As a New Jersey native, I feel tremendously honored to deliver the university’s commencement address this May. The class of 2022 will leave Rutgers at a time of great upheaval—in the world, in our own country—and yet it’s the passion and resilience that these young people show that gives me great hope in our collective future,” Remnick said in the statement.
Remnick, who joined The New Yorker magazine as a staff writer in 1992 and ascended to editor in 1998, has reported pieces from around the globe and profiled a number of prominent people, including former President Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen, according to a statement from Rutgers University.
He also serves as host of the magazine’s national radio program and podcast, The New Yorker Radio Hour, which airs weekly on public radio stations around the country.
Remnick began his reporting career in 1982 as a staff writer for The Washington Post, which led to a four-year tenure as the paper’s Moscow correspondent in 1988. That experience formed the basis of his 1993 book on the former Soviet Union, Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire, which received both the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction and a George Polk Award for excellence in journalism.
He authored five more books, including a biography of Obama, “The Bridge.”
Under Remnick’s leadership, The New Yorker has won a record 55 National Magazine Awards.
Remnick’s personal honors include being named Advertising Age’s Editor of the Year in 2000 and 2016 and being elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2016, according to the statement.
He has been a visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and has taught at Princeton, where he received his Bachelors degree in 1981, as well as at Columbia University.
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Vashti Harris may be reached at vharris@njadvancemedia.com.
