The class of 2026 undergraduate commencement speaker has been announced, with the speech set to take place on Sunday May 24th.

Douglas Brinkley, Ph.D., will address the class of 2026. Brinkley is a best-selling author, award-winning producer and nationally celebrated scholar and historian. His career has included authoring, editing, and contributing to many books and essays. Topics he has covered range from American foreign policy, the presidency of the environment, and the lives of transformative figures like Jack Kerouac, Rosa Parks, and Hunter S. Thompson.

Dr. Brinkley’s New York Times best-selling books are his biography of Walter Cronkite, which won the Ann M. Sperber Prize at Fordham University. His work also includes “The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast,”  and won the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Book Award.

Dr. Brinkley is also a Grammy award winner, as he is a co-producer of the albums “Presidential Suite” and “Fandango at the Wall in New York.”

University President Rev. Joseph G. Marina, S.J., said that Dr. Brinkley’s work has demonstrated that when history is researched and written with authority, it can inform, inspire, and endure.

Dr. Brinkley is also at the forefront of protecting America’s natural beauty, as he serves as a leader in environmental conservation and historic preservation community with service that includes board membership and advisory leadership.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Dr. Brinkley eventually moved to Perrysburg, Ohio during his childhood. He attended Ohio State University, where he pursued the study of U.S. History, and he was also awarded a fellowship to Georgetown University where he was surrounded by the study of U.S. diplomatic history, and received his master's and his doctorate degrees.

Earlier in Dr. Brinkley’s career, he served in a faculty position at the U.S. Naval Academy, Princeton University and Hofstra University. One of his courses at Hofstra called “American Odyssey,” included traveling across the country with his students to historic landmarks that have shaped America. His course has drawn national attention with work in publications such as The New York Times and SPIN Magazine. He has since taught at the University of New Orleans and Tulane University.

Currently, he is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Professor in Humanities at Rice University. He is also the presidential historian at CNN and a Vanity Fair contributor.

Dr. Brinkley will receive an honorary degree at the undergraduate commencement ceremony.

The ceremony will be held at the Mohegan Sun Arena, with doors opening at 9:45 a.m. and a start time of 11 a.m.