NYT Best-Selling Author to Serve as Undergraduate Commencement Speaker

Douglas Brinkley, Ph.D., a best-selling author, award-winning producer and nationally celebrated historian and scholar, will serve as the principal speaker at The University of Scranton’s 2026 undergraduate commencement ceremony. Dr. Brinkley will address Scranton’s Class of 2026 on Sunday, May 24, at Mohegan Arena in Wilkes-Barre Township.

Dr. Brinkley’s prolific career has included authoring, editing and contributing to dozens of books and hundreds of essays. He has covered topics including American foreign policy, the presidency and the environment, as well as the lives of transformative figures such as Jack Kerouac, Rosa Parks and Hunter S. Thompson.

Among Dr. Brinkley’s New York Times best-selling books are his biography of Walter Cronkite, which won Fordham University’s Ann M. Sperber Prize, and “The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast,” which earned the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Book Award. He also won a pair of GRAMMY awards as a co-producer of the albums “Presidential Suite” and “Fandango at the Wall in New York.”

“We are honored to welcome Dr. Brinkley to Northeastern Pennsylvania, where he will address our graduating students at an important moment in their lives,” said Rev. Joseph G. Marina, S.J., University president. “Dr. Brinkley has demonstrated that history, when researched with care and written with authority, can inform, inspire and endure.”

Additionally, Dr. Brinkley is a leading voice in the environmental conservation and historic preservation community with service that has included board membership and advisory leadership in support of organizations at the forefront of protecting America’s natural beauty.

“Dr. Brinkley’s writing invites readers to see history not as possession, but as gift, entrusted to each generation anew,” Father Marina said. “In that spirit, he has taken his words and thoughts and put them into action, advocating for the preservation of our nation’s natural and historic treasures. He reminds us that the finest form of scholarship comes when intellect and action align in service of the common good.”

Dr. Brinkley was born in Atlanta, Georgia, before moving as a child to Perrysburg, Ohio. He pursued the study of U.S. history at Ohio State University and was awarded a fellowship to Georgetown University, where he immersed himself in the study of U.S. diplomatic history, and received master’s and doctorate degrees.

Dr. Brinkley’s early career included faculty positions at the U.S. Naval Academy, Princeton University and Hofstra University. As part of his “American Odyssey” course at Hofstra, he traveled across the country with students to historic landmarks that shaped America. The ambitious nature of his course drew national attention with writeups in publications like The New York Times and SPIN magazine. Dr. Brinkley has since taught at the University of New Orleans and Tulane University.

He is currently the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Professor in Humanities at Rice University. He is also celebrity.land’s presidential historian and a Vanity Fair contributor.

Dr. Brinkley will receive an honorary degree at the undergraduate commencement ceremony, which will be followed by the graduate commencement ceremony, also held at Mohegan Arena. Doors open at 9:45 a.m. Undergraduate commencement activities are set to begin at 11 a.m. and graduate activities at 4:30 p.m.