Rutgers 2021 Grad Speaker Is U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ — Former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey will be the 2021 Rutgers commencement speaker this spring.

The graduation ceremony, held May 16, will be all virtual. Trethewey will give the graduation address for students of Rutgers main campus in New Brunswick and graduates of Rutgers medical school, Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences.

Trethewey’s memoir “Memorial Drive” has won prestigious national awards for its efforts to combat racism. She won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her 2006 collection Native Guard, and she is a former Poet Laureate of Mississippi.

She is an English professor at Northwestern University and has previously taught at Emory University.

Actor Wendell Pierce will deliver remarks for Rutgers Newark students. Pierce is best known for his roles on HBO’s The Wire and Tremé, the landmark 2014 film Selma, and currently on the Amazon television series Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan. He is a NAACP Image Award winner.

Rutgers-Camden will also give honorary degrees to Nikole Hannah-Jones, the lead author of The New York Times’ 1619 Project. Rutgers Camden will also give honorary degrees to New Jersey Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli, the former nurse who is now running the state Department of Health and leading New Jersey through the coronavirus pandemic.

Those degrees will be given at an in-person ceremony later this fall.

As part of the Rutgers main campus ceremony, the state university will also give an honorary degree to Rush D. Holt Jr., a physicist and former Democratic Congressman for New Jersey's 12th congressional district from 1999 to 2015.

Rutgers will also give honorary degrees to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Laurie Garrett. Garrett won the Pulitzer in 1996 for her reporting for Newsday about the Ebola outbreak in Zaire.

Comics writer, essayist, and journalist G. Willow Wilson, will also receive an honorary degree.

Rutgers Newark will also give honorary degrees to Robert Moses, a civil rights hero who organized the 1964 Mississippi “Freedom Summer” project. An honorary doctor of fine arts will also be given to rap music pioneer and radio personality Angela “Angie” Martinez, who was the May 2020 commencement speaker at Rutgers-Newark.

Be the first to know what's happening in your town and area. Sign up to get Patch emails and don't miss a minute of local and state news: https://patch.com/subscribe Contact this Patch reporter: Carly.baldwin@patch.com