April 30, 2008 | Hunter College
Chris Matthews, broadcast journalist and host of MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews, will address approximately 3,000 members of the Class of 2008 and their families and friends at Hunter College’s 197th commencement ceremony, to be held on June 4, 2008 at Radio City Music Hall.
A television news anchor with significant depth of experience, Matthews has distinguished himself as a broadcast journalist, newspaper bureau chief, presidential speechwriter, and bestselling author. Matthews covered the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first all-races election in South Africa, the Good Friday Peace Accord in Northern Ireland, and the funeral of Pope John Paul II. He has covered every American presidential election campaign since the 1980s.
Matthews worked for fifteen years as a newspaper journalist, thirteen of them as a Washington bureau chief for the San Francisco Examiner and two as a national columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Before that, he had a fifteen year career in public service: in the U.S. Senate for five years for Senator Frank Moss of Utah and Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine; in the White House for four years under President Jimmy Carter as a presidential speechwriter and on the President’s Reorganization Project. He previously served for six years as the top aide to Speaker of the House Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, Jr.
Hunter’s commencement ceremony will take place at 2pm on June 4. The College will also celebrate the achievements of Hunter alumni Abbe Raven, President and CEO of A&E Television Networks, and Joel Katz, prominent entertainment attorney who is chairman of Greenberg Traurig’s global entertainment practice. Raven and Katz both will be awarded honorary degrees.