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World-renowned journalist and author Doris Kearns Goodwin, who has been reporting on politics and baseball for more than two decades, will deliver the Commencement address at the University of Delaware on Saturday, May 25.
"As a well-known and insightful commentator on our modern world, Doris Kearns Goodwin promises to be a thought-provoking speaker for the Class of 2002," Sharon H. Dorr, director of the Office of University and Alumni Relations, said in making the announcement. "Her experiences as an academic, a White House insider, a best-selling author and a media personality give her a unique perspective on our changing world.”
Graduating seniors were asked to nominate potential speakers, and Goodwin was one of those nominated, Dorr said.
The free public ceremony, which will be held outdoors rain or shine, will begin at 9 a.m. in Delaware Stadium.
A regular panelist on PBS’ “The News Hour with Jim Lehrer,” a commentator for NBC, Goodwin has served as a consultant and on-air person for PBS documentaries on Lyndon B. Johnson, the Kennedy family, Franklin Roosevelt and Ken Burns’ “The History of Baseball.”
Goodwin received her bachelor’s degree magna cum laude from Colby College, where she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. She earned her doctorate in government from Harvard University, where she was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. For 10 years, she taught government at Harvard, including a class on the American presidency.
After Harvard, she served as an assistant to Lyndon Johnson in his last year in the White House and later assisted him in the preparation of his memoirs.
In 1976, Goodwin authored “Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream,” which became a bestseller. Her 1987 book “The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys,” was a bestseller, won various awards and was made into a six-hour ABC miniseries in 1990. Her next book, “No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The American Home Front During World War II,” was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1995, as well as the Harold Washington Literary Award, the New England Bookseller Association Award, the Ambassador Book Award and The Washington Monthly Book Award.
Goodwin’s most recent book, “Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir,” is about growing up in the 1950s in love with the Brooklyn Dodgers. A reviewer in The Washington Post wrote about the bestseller, “This is a book in the grand tradition of girlhood memoirs, dating from Louisa May Alcott to Carson McCullers and Harper Lee.” Goodwin was the first female journalist to enter the Red Sox locker room.
Her honors include the National Humanities Medal and the Sara Josepha Hale Medal. She is a member of the Harvard University Board of Overseers and the Society of American Historians.
Goodwin is married to Richard Goodwin, who worked in the White House under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.
Feb. 18, 2002
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