HIGH POINT – High Point University will feature Wolf Blitzer, CNN’s lead political anchor and anchor of the “Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer,” as the commencement speaker on May 6. The university will award approximately 1,000 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees.

Previous speakers have included: the 66th Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; broadcast legend Tom Brokaw; Gen. Colin Powell, former secretary of state, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and national security advisor; former First Lady Laura Bush; U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple and HPU’s Innovator in Residence; Rudy Giuliani, former New York City Mayor; Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan; NASA Astronaut Dr. Buzz Aldrin and Muhtar Kent, CEO of the Coca-Cola Company.

About the 2017 commencement speaker

Blitzer has been with CNN for 23 years. Over the decades, he has reported on a wide range of major stories that have shaped the international political landscape.

Blitzer began his career in 1972 with the Reuters News Agency in Tel Aviv. Shortly thereafter, he became a Washington, D.C., correspondent for the Jerusalem Post. After more than 15 years of reporting from the nation’s capital, Blitzer joined CNN in 1990 as the network’s military-affairs correspondent at the Pentagon. He then served as CNN’s senior White House correspondent covering President Bill Clinton from the November 1992 election until 1999, when he became the anchor of CNN’s Sunday public affairs program, “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer,” and remained for more than a decade.

Throughout his career, Blitzer has interviewed some of history’s most notable figures, including U.S. presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. Blitzer has also interviewed many foreign leaders—the Dalai Lama, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former South African President Nelson Mandela.

In 2013, Blitzer was recognized as the sixth recipient of the Urbino Press Award from the Italian Embassy for his excellence in journalism. In 2011, Blitzer received the distinguished Leonard Zeidenberg First Amendment Award from the Radio and Television Digital News Foundation, and the Panetta Institute for Public Policy’s Jefferson-Lincoln Award.

Among the numerous honors he has received for his reporting, Blitzer was a part of the CNN team to earn a 2006 Emmy Award for live coverage of the midterm election. He is also the recipient of the 2004 Journalist Pillar of Justice Award from the Respect for Law Alliance and the 2003 Daniel Pearl Award from the Chicago Press Veterans Association. He was also among the teams awarded a George Foster Peabody award for Hurricane Katrina coverage; an Alfred I. duPont Award for coverage of the tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia and an Edward R. Murrow Award for CNN’s coverage of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. Furthermore, Blitzer is the recipient of an Emmy Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his 1996 coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing and a Golden CableACE from the National Academy of Cable Programming for his and CNN’s coverage of the Persian Gulf War.

Blitzer has authored two books, “Between Washington and Jerusalem: A reporter’s notebook” and “Territory of Lies,” cited by The New York Times Book Review as one of the most notable books of 1989.

Blitzer earned a bachelor of arts in history from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a master of arts in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. In addition, Blitzer has numerous honorary degrees from educational institutions across the country, including George Washington University in Washington, D.C.; the State University of New York at Buffalo; the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. and the Pennsylvania State University in State College, Penn.

Ceremony details

Hight Point University’s graduation ceremony will be held at 9 a.m. on May 6 on the Roberts Hall Lawn. The rain site is Millis Athletic and Convocation Center. Blitzer will be the featured speaker.

The ceremony will be available via live streaming at www.highpoint.edu/live. For additional information, visit www.highpoint.edu/commencement.