Universities Weblog

(Source: Harvard University)Sticking with the Harvard theme for a bit, here's some news courtesy of the Chronicle of Higher Education. It seems NBC's Tim Russert, the university's choice for Class Day speaker, has made a habit of delivering essentially the same address for each commencement appearance. And this is how Harvard students had fun with him:

It's a time-honored tradition for celebrities who are in demand as commencement speakers to use ghost writers. And when all else fails, the speakers have been known to simply deliver the same speech they gave the previous year. So it was that Tim Russert, the NBC newsman and best-selling author, found himself addressing Harvard students on Wednesday, at the university's annual Class Day event. It wasn't a commencement address, but it was one of four graduation-related speeches he has delivered this spring. Turns out, the speeches had more than a little in common. As first reported last month in the Telegram & Gazette of Worcester, Mass., Mr. Russert has apparently delivered the same basic commencement speech for several years. (According to The Chronicle's commencement-speaker database, he has spoken on 17 campuses since 2000.) At Harvard on Wednesday, the students were ready. Equipped with cards listing pat phrases from past speeches, set out in a bingo-like format, they ticked off the passages as Mr. Russert spoke and then, having completed a row, shouted out "Bingo!"

Now that's news!

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