“I’m Lester Holt. Please take care of yourselves, and each other.”

Would Lester Holt end a commencement speech the same way he signs off of NBC’s Nightly News? Well, on Friday, May 19th, the date of the University’s undergraduate commencement ceremony, we will certainly find out. 

Honoring tradition, The Villanovan is privileged to be the first to break the commencement speaker news to the community, and University President Rev. Peter M. Donahue, O.S.A., Ph.D. likes to be the one to personally deliver the news. 

The Villanovan sat down with Fr. Peter to find out and deliver the answer to the burning question of,  “Who will be the Class of 2023’s commencement speaker?”

Being that almost the entirety of the Class of 2023’s college undergraduate experience has been shaped by the coronavirus pandemic, Fr. Peter wanted to acknowledge its strength. 

“They have a lot of fortitude,” he said about the personality of the Class of 2023. 

“I know it hasn’t been easy for any of us,” he continued. “But certainly we got through it because of the students and the students’ commitment to being here and being a part of this place. I see very much COVID in the rearview mirror right now.”

Fr. Peter wants students to focus on the future and not all that was lost through their college years due to the pandemic.

“I realize it’s been difficult,” he said. “And we’re hoping not to dwell on that. Let’s dwell on the future.”

And with the speaker being award-winning NBC news anchor Lester Holt, students have a lot to look forward to in the near future.

Holt, known most notably for his hosting of the NBC Nightly News and NBC’s Dateline, where he has covered topics ranging from the pandemic to elections to weddings, will be joining Villanova undergraduates on Friday, May 19th as the speaker at their graduation ceremony. 

Holt is currently the anchor and managing editor of NBC’s broadcast, “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt,” which won the 2022 Edward Murrow Award. He has also been the anchor of “Dateline NBC” since September of 2011. The Hollywood Report and Morning Consult poll named Holt the “most-trusted television news personality in America.” 

On top of all of these honors and awards, he has received multiple Emmy Awards and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism award. A Black man, he was named “Journalist of the Year” by the National Association of Black Journalists. 

Holt is well-known for his on the ground-the-ground reporting, reporting from the scenes of major events, including in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion, in Uvalde, Texas following the deadly shooting in a school and from the scene of natural disasters such as Hurricane Ian in Florida.

Fr. Peter believes students will be excited about this year’s speaker being Lester Holt.

“[I] think they’ll recognize the name, and I think they’ll recognize him,” he said. 

The search for a commencement speaker began months ago. Fr. Peter shared that the search typically starts back in August, around the beginning of the fall semester. He shared how difficult it is to get people, especially the busy professionals that the University scouts out as potential commencement speakers, to look so far ahead in their calendars. The University also has a tradition of giving the speaker an honorary degree as their payment for taking the job, so many people turn the opportunity down because of the lack of monetary pay. 

The University also searches for certain qualities in a speaker. Fr. Peter said the University wants to ensure that the speaker has something to share with students that students would find interesting or learn a life lesson from. 

The question Fr. Peter asks himself while conducting the search for a speaker is, “Are their values in line with ours?” 

Last year, the community erupted with commentary on the original lack of a commencement speaker at the ceremony for the Class of 2022 before Jay Wright was approved by the University board to be the speaker. However, this did not change the process of searching for a commencement speaker, Fr. Peter shared. 

“I think he will have a message to offer to the graduates,” Fr. Peter said about Holt.  

Fr. Peter closed the conversation by wishing the Class of 2023 “good luck” with these last few weeks of the semester, saying he looks forward to sharing more well wishes with the class at their graduation.