<p>Fareed Zakaria, writer and international relations commentator, will deliver the 2009 baccalaureate address Saturday, May 23, to members of the Brown University Class of 2009. Zakaria’s address, to be presented in the Meeting House of the First Baptist Church in America, will be simulcast to The College Green.</p>

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Fareed Zakaria, author, columnist, and editor of Newsweek International, will deliver the 2009 baccalaureate address on Saturday afternoon, May 23, in the Meeting House of the First Baptist Church in America. Zakaria has titled his address “Living a Global Life.”

In addition to his work at Newsweek International, Zakaria is a CNN host, an analyst for ABC News, and a frequent guest and international relations commentator on PBS, the BBC, weekly news discussion programs, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Esquire magazine has called him “the most influential foreign policy adviser of his generation.”

Because the graduating class will fill the Meeting House to capacity on that Saturday, the baccalaureate service will be simulcast to The College Green, where family and friends of the graduates may view the proceedings on a large-format video display.

Zakaria, born in Mumbai, India, came to the United States for post-secondary education, earning his B.A. at Yale and his Ph.D. in political science at Harvard. After a period of teaching and research in international relations at Harvard, Zakaria became, at age 28, the youngest managing editor of Foreign Affairs, one of the foremost journals of international economics and politics.

In October 2000, Zakaria moved to Newsweek International, where he is responsible for overseeing all of the magazine’s editions outside the United States. He writes a regular column for Newsweek and writes for a range of other publications including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and the online publication Slate.

He is the author of two books, The Future of Freedom (2003) and The Post American World (2008), which explores “the rise of the rest” — China, India, Brazil and other emerging economic powers.

Zakaria, a naturalized U.S. citizen, lives in New York City.

The Baccalaureate Service

The Baccalaureate Service, with roots in medieval academic tradition, honors the achievements of the candidates for the bachelor’s (“bacca”) degree by presenting them with the laurels (“lauri”) of oration. Brown’s baccalaureate tradition derives from the immense range of religious, ethnic, geographic, linguistic, and musical traditions present within the campus community by including rituals, readings, and prayer from Islam, Judaism, Hindu, Christian, Buddhist and animist traditions, as well as African libations, choral and instrumental music, the Chinese lion dance, poetry, dance, and drumming.

The service is conducted in the Meeting House of the First Baptist Church in America, completed in 1775 “for the Publick Worship of Almighty God, and also for holding Commencement in.” Significant portions of the University’s Commencement ceremonies have been held in the church ever since.