Fareed Zakaria to speak at commencement

Journalist Fareed Zakaria will speak at the Class of 2012's commencement ceremony.

President Richard Brodhead made the announcement to a group of student leaders meeting in the Allen Building Friday.

Zakaria is editor-at-large at Time magazine and the host of CNN's "Fareed Zakaria's GPS." He is also a frequent commentator on issues regarding national relations and a former columnist for Newsweek.

After speaking at Duke May 13, Zakaria will head to Harvard University May 24, where he will also give the commencement address. He told The Harvard Crimson in October that in his speech at the school he wants to “sketch the new world that we’re moving into” for graduates.

Zakaria previously spoke at Duke in November 2009 when he gave the Ambassador S. Davis Phillips Lecture. During his address, he spoke about the challenges that the United States faces in the coming decades and centuries, The Chronicle previously reported. He noted that the country has not spent enough money on science and education and America's biggest challenge is to reinvigorate its political and economic dynamics.

“My greatest fear is that 200 years from now, a historian will say that the U.S. has globalized the world—it has just forgotten to globalize itself,” he said.