Hobart and William Smith Colleges

22 February 2019 The New Yorkers Wickenden: Commencement 2019 Speaker

Executive Editor ofThe New Yorker and former Hobart and William Smith Colleges Trustee Dorothy H. Wickenden 76, L.H.D. 14 will deliver the 2019 Commencement address.

During her distinguished career, Dorothy Wickenden has demonstrated a diligence and fearlessness in pursuing important news that reflects the Colleges values of intellectual rigor, integrity and citizenship, says Interim President Patrick A. McGuire L.H.D. 12. Under her leadership, The New Yorker has played a critical role in elevating public discourse on vital issues, from national politics and foreign affairs to the #MeToo movement. She is an accomplished journalist, author, and executive whose experience makes her uniquely suited to address the world into which our seniors will graduate.

This year celebrates the 194th Commencement of Hobart College and the 108th Commencement of William Smith College. The ceremony will be held at 10 a.m. on Sunday, May 19 on the Hobart Quadrangle.

Before joining The New Yorker, Wickenden spent 15 years at The New Republic, first as managing editor and later as executive editor. Wickenden went on to serve as national affairs editor ofNewsweek before moving toThe New Yorker in 1995. In addition to her role as executive editor, which she has held since 1996, she is the moderator ofThe New Yorkers weekly podcast, The Political Scene.

In 2011, Wickenden published Nothing Daunted, a New York Times bestseller that traces the westward journey of Rosamund Underwood and Dorothy Woodruff, Wickendens grandmother. NPRs Fresh Air said of the book: Wickenden summons up the last moments of frontier life, where books were a luxury and, when blizzards hit, homesteaders children would ski miles to school on curved barrel staves. Nothing Daunted also reminds us that different strains of courage can be found, not just on the battlefield but on the home front, too.

Wickenden has written forThe Wall Street Journal,The Washington Post, and andThe New Yorker. She is the editor ofThe New Republic Reader: Eighty Years of Opinion and Debate, a compilation of the best work from some of the magazines top contributors, including George Orwell, Rebecca West, John Dewey, Arthur M. Schlesinger, and many others.

Wickenden has served on the faculty of The Writers Institute at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City, and she is a member of the final selection committee for The Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

Wickenden graduated from William Smithmagna cum laudeas a member of Phi Beta Kappa, earning her B.A. in English with high honors. She was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard in 1988. She served as a member of the Colleges Board of Trustees from 1994-1998. She received the Presidents Medal at Hobart and William Smith in 2006, and in 2014, an honorary doctorate from the Colleges. In 2015, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Iona College. In November 2018, she was a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, where she worked on her forthcoming book, The Agitators: How Three Friends Fought for Abolition and Womens Rights, and Hastened the Civil Wars New Birth of Freedom.