National Speaker to Address Convocation

Cokie Roberts, a political analyst for ABC News and National Public Radio, will deliver the keynote address at Convocation on Sept. 18 at Rice Auditorium as part of the University’s 150th celebration and as the featured speaker in the Loreine Collins Dietrich Distinguished Lecture Series.

During more than 30 years in broadcasting, Roberts has won numerous awards and honors, including two Emmy Awards, induction into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame and a citation from the American Women in Radio and Television as of one of the 50 greatest women in the history of broadcasting. She and her husband, Steven V. Roberts, write a weekly newspaper column, are contributing editors to USA Magazine, and wrote The New York Times bestseller From This Day Forward. She is also the author of the bestseller We Are Our Mothers’ Daughters and her recent book, Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation.

She co-anchored ABC’s “This Week With Sam Donaldson & Cokie Roberts” from 1996 to 2002. She has been chief congressional analyst for ABC News, a reporter for “World News Tonight” and other ABC News broadcasts, NPR’s congressional correspondent and president of the Radio and Television Correspondent’s Association.

The Lecture Series has hosted President Gerald Ford, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, United Nations Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick and newspaper columnists William F. Buckley Jr. and George Will.

Other events this fall to commemorate Baker’s 150th anniversary include a kickoff dinner Aug. 20 for faculty, staff and the community and a Hall of Fame Banquet in Kansas City, Mo., on Oct. 5 and a Gala Auction on April 19, 2008.