The season of commencement address speaker announcements is upon us, and Wake Forest University has revealed Stephen Colbert as theirs.
According to the Associated Press, Colbert will be giving his third commencement address in five years this spring. The school has said it will stream the ceremony live online.
Jill Abrahamson, the former executive editor of the New York Times, delivered the commencement address at Wake Forest only a week after she was dismissed. Colbert gave the commencement address in 2013 at the University of Virginia and at Northwestern University, his alma mater, in 2011.
"We are thrilled Stephen Colbert has accepted the invitation to speak at Wake Forest's commencement ceremony," Wake Forest President Nathan O. Hatch said in the school's announcement. "I'm not sure what our graduates will enjoy more - how his creative genius reflects the exaggerated extremes of politics and contemporary life or how so many of us at Wake Forest will find ourselves on the receiving end of his jokes."
Colbert got his break on television with Comedy Central on Jon Stewart's satirical news show, the Daily Show. He then moved on to host the Colbert Report, a similar show that followed Stewart's, but with a conservative twist.
Colbert left the Report in Dec. after nine years to be David Letterman's successor as host of CBS' Late Show. Colbert will debut in his new role on Tuesday, Sept. 8. Colbert also has two books that spent several weeks on the New York Times' bestseller list: I Am America (And So Can You) and American Again: Re-Becoming the Greatest We Never Weren't.
"As a social ethicist and scholar of American religions, Jonathan Walton asks us to commit ourselves to building a country where all people feel valued," Hatch said. "His work is a call to action that demands we look honestly at ourselves and our country to both recognize injustice and stand up against it."
