Colby Announces Commencement 2025 Speakers and Honorands
Five inspiring individuals to receive honorary degrees and join graduates in celebration
Charlie Baker, former Massachusetts governor and the current president of the NCAA, will address graduates and their families at Colby’s 204th Commencement May 25, 2025, and Eric Motley, memoirist and deputy director of the National Gallery of Art, will deliver the baccalaureate address Saturday, May 24.
Baker, Motley, and three other inspiring individuals will receive honorary degrees from the College. The honorands will join the graduating seniors, Colby’s distinguished faculty, and guests to celebrate graduates’ academic achievements, creativity and innovation, and lasting impact on the College and community.
Those receiving honorary degrees are:
Charlie Baker, former Massachusetts governor and current NCAA president
David Brancaccio, host and senior editor of Marketplace Morning Report
Judy Glickman Lauder, photographer, humanitarian, and philanthropist
Lois Lowry, award-winning novelist
Eric Motley, author of Madison Park and deputy director of the National Gallery of Art
“The achievements of these individuals demonstrate the human capacity to enlighten, educate, and entertain, to live a principled life, and to lead with the common good as their guiding light,” said Colby President David A. Greene. “Our Colby graduates will do the same as they enter a world needing their talents and passion for a just and promising future.”
As a Republican governor in a predominantly Democratic state, Charlie Baker worked across party lines to pass bipartisan legislation during an era of increased polarization. Over two terms, he led the commonwealth out of a billion-dollar budget deficit and into a surplus, cut taxes, and boosted investments in education and infrastructure. His major accomplishments include extending broadband internet, improving access to behavioral health, increasing spending on addiction and recovery services, progressing clean energy laws, and criminal justice and policing reforms. Throughout his tenure, he was consistently ranked as one of the most popular governors in America.
In March 2023, Baker became the sixth president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA, during dramatic changes in the regulatory and legal environment for college athletics. His mission to improve the student-athlete experience, increase national office efficiency, and advocate for college sports has resulted in a post-eligibility insurance program for all three athletic divisions, Division I core guarantees such as mandatory health and wellness benefits and new academic protections, and more. Baker believes college sports provide unmatched opportunities for young people to access higher education.
Baker coauthored the 2022 book Results: Getting Beyond Politics to Get Important Work Done. He is a graduate of Harvard University, where he was a member of the men’s varsity basketball team, and holds a master’s of business administration from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Deputy Director of the National Gallery of Art Eric Motley is a scholar and visionary with an unwavering commitment to the arts and culture. Across the arc of his career, he has been guided by his personal story of hope, self-determination, and faith, recounted in his memoir Madison Park: A Place of Hope. Madison Park, where Motley was raised, is a small community founded in 1880 by a group of freed slaves in Montgomery, Ala. The book celebrates the people who taught him to pursue a life of the mind and heart, to help others, and to believe in creating and sustaining community.
Motley previously served as executive vice president at the Aspen Institute and as director of the U.S. Department of State’s Office of International Visitors within the Bureau of Public Diplomacy. In 2003 he was appointed special assistant to President George W. Bush for presidential personnel. He serves on the board of trustees of the Morgan Library & Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, public broadcasting station WETA, and the Bishop Walker School for Boys. He is also a member of the James Madison Council of the Library of Congress and board chair of the Washington National Cathedral.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and philosophy from Samford University in Birmingham, Ala., a master of letters in international relations as a Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholar at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and a doctorate as the John Steven Watson Scholar at St. Andrews.
Colby will also grant honorary degrees to:
David Brancaccio, an award-winning host and senior editor of American Public Media’s Marketplace Morning Report. Known for his spirited delivery and ability to make complex economic issues accessible for mainstream audiences, Brancaccio is a Waterville native. He grew up on Colby’s campus, the son of the late Patrick Brancaccio, the Zacamy Professor of English, Emeritus, and Ruth Brancaccio, cofounder of the Social Action Theater at Colby and co-director of Colby’s academic program in London. From his first radio appearance at age 13 doing the news on Colby’s radio station, WMHB, he has gone on to earn the Peabody, duPont-Columbia, Emmy, and Walter Cronkite awards. Brancaccio has co-produced and appeared in several documentaries, enjoys moderating public policy discussions, and is a certified Level 2 high-powered rocketeer who designs, builds, and launches rockets. He attended schools in Italy, Madagascar, and Ghana, and he has degrees from Wesleyan and Stanford universities.
Judy Glickman Lauder, an internationally recognized artist, photographer, and philanthropist. She is a resident of Maine and New York whose photographs have been exhibited worldwide and are represented in more than 300 public and private collections, including the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her photographs were also part of the traveling exhibitions Holocaust: The Presence of the Past and Resistance and Rescue: Denmark’s Response to the Holocaust. A fellow of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, Glickman Lauder serves on the board of trustees of the Portland Museum of Art, which holds the Judy Glickman Lauder Collection of nearly 700 works of art, including photographs by Berenice Abbott, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, and other influential photographers. She is also a member of both the Getty Museum Photographic Council and the Photographic Visiting Committee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Lois Lowry, a celebrated and award-winning writer of books for children and young adults. Lowry, who lives in Maine, has won two Newbery Medals, given annually by the Association for Library Service to Children to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. Lowry, whose son graduated from Colby in 1985, is known for writing about difficult subject matters and controversial topics, and her books have been challenged and banned in some schools and libraries. Her best-known book, The Giver, from 1993, is also one of her most controversial because of its dark, dystopian themes. It has sold more than 12 million copies and was made into a movie starring Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep. A School Library Journal survey designated it as the fourth-best children’s novel of all time, and the American Library Association ranks it among the most-challenged books in recent decades.
Members of the Class of 2025 came to Colby from 46 states and 20 countries. They will leave Mayflower Hill prepared for careers or graduate work in scientific research, education, law, government, medicine, environmental advocacy, entrepreneurship, nonprofit leadership, finance, and much more.
The commencement ceremony will begin at 10 a.m. on the Miller Library lawn, weather permitting. It is open to the public. Any notice of weather-related location changes will be posted at colby.edu, as will the link to a live video stream for those unable to attend.
Media members who plan to attend should contact George Sopko in the Office of Communications at [email protected] or 207-859-4346. Advance notice and Colby-issued press credentials are required of all members of the media.
