Left & Non-Left Commencements

Every year colleges award honorary degrees to commence speakers. In this year of a divided America, InsideHigherEd.com posts lists of commencement speakers. From today’s listing I count six Commencement speakers who are politically Left of center and nine commencement speakers that are not identifiable, at least by me, as politically Left of center.

Which can you identify ?

InsideHigherEd.com           March 8, 2017

• Alma College: Kimberly Taylor, a senior executive with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
• Bennington College: Cornell William Brooks, president and CEO of the NAACP.
• Case Western Reserve University: Fred Gray, the lawyer who defended Rosa Parks.
• Chesapeake College: David Skorton, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.
• Colgate University: Claudia Rankine, the poet.
• Colorado Mountain College: John Hickenlooper, governor of Colorado, and eight others.
• Harvard University: Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook.
• Marist College: Eugene Robinson, columnist for The Washington Post.
• Smith College: Oprah Winfrey, the media leader.
• Tulane University: Helen Mirren, the actress.
• University of Southern California: Will Ferrell, the actor.
• Widener University: Steven M. Gillon, professor of history at the University of Oklahoma and Kimberlyn Leary, associate professor of health policy and management at Harvard University.
• Wilson College: John David Risher, an entrepreneur and advocate for educational access.
• York College of Pennsylvania: Jeff Koons, the sculptor.