Culture
Wesley Lowery Named 2017 OU Commencement Speaker
< < Back toOhio University has announced that National Correspondent for The Washington Post Wesley Lowery will serve as its 2017 Undergraduate Commencement speaker. Mr. Lowery will speak at the morning and afternoon ceremonies.
“In his relatively short career, Wesley Lowery has already accomplished a great deal, namely earning a reputation for excellence in reporting during his award-winning work at The Boston Globe and The Washington Post,” Interim President David Descutner said. “We are so proud of Wesley and believe our graduates and their families will be inspired by this former Bobcat and his experiences on the front lines of contemporary history.”
Wesley Lowery is a national correspondent for The Washington Post where he covers issues of race, justice, law enforcement and politics. He has been the paper’s lead reporter on the Black Lives Matter protests and was a member of the team awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize and George Polk Awards for National Reporting for their coverage of fatal police shootings. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement.
Prior to joining The Washington Post, Lowery was a reporter for The Boston Globe, where he contributed to the paper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings, and was one of the lead reporters covering the 2013 mayoral race and the murder trial of former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez.
His reporting and writing has also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated and The Guardian.
Lowery attended Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism from 2008 to 2012, and served as the editor-in-chief of The Post, the campus’ independent student newspaper.
“I couldn’t be more excited to come back to Athens to send off this year’s class of graduating Bobcats,” Lowery said. “Each time I’m back on campus I find myself inspired by the energy, passion and talent of OU students, so it’s a real honor to have the chance to be one of the last voices this year’s graduating class will hear before departing Athens and heading out into the world.”
