Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson will give Class of 2025 commencement address
Wilkerson also will receive an honorary degree at the ceremony.
Isabel Wilkerson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, will give the commencement address for Carleton College’s 151st Commencement. The ceremony will take place outdoors on the Bald Spot on Saturday, June 14, 2025.
Wilkerson won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 1994, as Chicago bureau chief of The New York Times, making her the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize in journalism. She is also a winner of the National Humanities Medal, the recipient of which is determined annually by the President of the United States in consultation with the National Endowment for the Humanities. Wilkerson won the medal in 2015 for “championing the stories of an unsung history” in her deeply researched telling of the Great Migration, one of the biggest underreported stories of the twentieth century and one of the largest migrations in American history.
“At a time when higher education and many of our most cherished values are being questioned, it seems especially fitting to have the opportunity to recognize the work of a writer who so beautifully exemplifies the power and impact of thoughtful research and excellent writing in helping us to make sense of our history, culture, and challenges,” Carleton President Alison Byerly said.
Wilkerson will also be awarded an honorary degree during the ceremony in recognition of her groundbreaking work in journalism and history. With its honorary degrees, Carleton seeks to honor those who have achieved eminence in their own profession or who have rendered distinguished service to society.
A native of Washington, D.C., Wilkerson is also a daughter of the Great Migration. She devoted 15 years and interviewed more than 1,200 people to tell the story of the six million people, among them her parents, who defected from the Jim Crow South. She has become a leading figure in narrative nonfiction, an interpreter of the human condition, and an impassioned voice for demonstrating “how history can help us understand ourselves, our country, and our current era of upheaval.”
Wilkerson’s debut work, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Heartland Prize for Nonfiction, the Anisfield-Wolf Award for Nonfiction, the Lynton History Prize from Harvard University and Columbia University, and the Stephen Ambrose Oral History Prize; it was also shortlisted for both the Pen-Galbraith Literary Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Her 2020 book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, links the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany and explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. The venerable U.K. bookseller, Waterstones, called it an “expansive, lyrical and stirring account of the unspoken system of divisions that govern our world.”
Carleton’s 2025 Commencement ceremony will be live streamed and archived so family and friends of graduates can share in the experience wherever they are in the world. For further information about Commencement, including disability accommodations, contact Noel Ponder at (507) 222-4309 or nponder@carleton.edu.
Erica Helgerud ’20 is the news and social media manager for Carleton College.