Commencement for the Class of 2020 will be held on April 24, 2021, on the lawn of Venable Hall.
The long wait is finally over, and Hampden-Sydney is excited to finally be able to properly celebrate the College’s 245th graduating class. Commencement for the Class of 2020 will be held on April 24, 2021, on the lawn of Venable Hall. As originally planned prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, political theorist, New York Times best-selling author, and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George Will will deliver the commencement address. After a year of uncertainty and change, the College looks forward to welcoming the sons of the Class of 2020 home to the Hill.
Given guidelines established by the governor, commencement ceremony attendance will be limited to registered guests of the members of the Class of 2020. All attendees will be expected to wear masks and adhere to social distancing guidelines set forth by the CDC and the Commonwealth of Virginia. Those not attending in person will be able to watch the ceremony via livestream.
2020 Commencement Speaker: George F. Will
George F. Will's newspaper column has been syndicated by The Washington Post since 1974. Today it appears twice weekly in more than 440 newspapers. In 1976 he became a regular contributing editor of Newsweek magazine, for which he provided a bimonthly essay until 2011. In 1977 he won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in his newspaper columns.
In June 2019, Mr. Will released his most recent work, The Conservative Sensibility. Altogether, eight collections of Mr. Will's Newsweek and Washington Post columns have been published, the most recent being One Man’s America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation (2008). Mr. Will has also published three books on political theory, Statecraft as Soulcraft: What Government Does (1983), The New Season: A Spectator's Guide to the 1988 Election (1987) and Restoration: Congress, Term Limits and The Recovery of Deliberative Democracy (1992). In 1990, Mr. Will published Men At Work: The Craft of Baseball, which topped The New York Times bestseller list for two months. In 1998, Scribner published Bunts: Curt Flood, Camden Yards, Pete Rose and Other Reflections on Baseball, a best-selling collection of new and previously published writings by Mr. Will on baseball. Mr. Will's most recent book on baseball is A Nice Little Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at One Hundred (2014). In July 2000, Mr. Will was a member of Major League Baseball's Blue Ribbon Panel, examining baseball economics.
In 1981, Mr. Will became a founding panel member on ABC television’s "This Week" and spent over three decades providing regular commentary. Then followed three years with Fox News where he appeared regularly on "Special Report" and "Fox News Sunday." Mr. Will is now a regular contributor to MSNBC and NBC News.
Mr. Will was born in Champaign, Illinois, educated at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, Oxford University and Princeton University, where he earned his Ph.D. and he later served as a trustee. He has taught political philosophy at Michigan State University, the University of Toronto and Harvard University. Mr. Will served as a staff member in the United States Senate from 1970 to 1972. From 1973 through 1976, he was the Washington editor of National Review magazine. Today, Mr. Will lives and works in the Washington, D.C., area.
The long wait is finally over, and Hampden-Sydney is excited to finally be able to properly celebrate the College’s 245th graduating class. Commencement for the Class of 2020 will be held on April 24, 2021, on the lawn of Venable Hall. As originally planned prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, political theorist, New York Times best-selling author, and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George Will will deliver the commencement address. After a year of uncertainty and change, the College looks forward to welcoming the sons of the Class of 2020 home to the Hill.
George F. Will's newspaper column has been syndicated by The Washington Post since 1974. Today it appears twice weekly in more than 440 newspapers. In 1976 he became a regular contributing editor of Newsweek magazine, for which he provided a bimonthly essay until 2011. In 1977 he won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in his newspaper columns.