Courtesy of the Office of the First Lady Laura Bush will speak at the commencement exercises for the School of Nursing and Health Sciences tomorrow.

Georgetown University will welcome distinguished alumni, noted scholars and journalists, a Cardinal and the first lady of the United States to speak at this year’s commencement ceremonies.

Commencement activities began Monday with senior convocation, featuring Maria Shriver (CAS ’77) as the keynote speaker.

First lady Laura Bush will speak at the commencement ceremony of the School of Nursing and Health Studies. Bush has devoted much of her time as first lady to her national initiative called Ready to Read, Ready to Learn. Her initiative promotes reading programs aimed at young children, particularly encouraging parents to start reading to their children at an early age. Bush also founded the National Book Festival which was attended by over 45,000 people last year, including 70 award-winning authors, storytellers and illustrators.

In November 2001, Bush became the only first lady in history to record a full presidential radio address, speaking about the plight of women and children in Afghanistan.

George Tenet (SFS ’68), Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, will return to Georgetown to address the School of Foreign Service. As Director of the CIA, Tenet heads the Intelligence Community, which is composed of all international intelligence agencies of the United States.

Prior to joining the CIA, Tenet served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Intelligence Programs on the National Security Council. Tenet was also a member of President Bill Clinton’s (SFS ’68) national security transition team.

Cardinal Francis Arinze, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, will speak at the ceremonies for the Georgetown College. Before being proclaimed Cardinal by Pope John Paul II in 1985, he was Archbishop of the Onitsha, Nigeria. Arinze has been rumored to be a possible successor to Pope John Paul II. Cardinal Arinze was the president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue until Oct. 1, 2002. While president, Arinze worked to promote ecumenical understanding – respect and collaboration between Catholics and the followers of other religious traditions. For this work he received a gold medallion from the International Council of Christians and Jews in recognition of outstanding achievements in inter-faith relations.

Economist Robert Schiller, the Stanley B. Resor Professor of Economics at the Cowles Foundation of Research in Economics at Yale University, will address the McDonough School of Business. Shiller is also Research Associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research, a fellow of the Econometric Society and a member of the Academic Advisory Panel for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Shiller received notoriety for his acclaimed 2001 book Irrational Exuberance, which examined the stock market boom since 1982 and concluded that the stock market was dramatically overvalued.

Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Anthony Lewis will speak at the commencement ceremony for the Georgetown Law Center. Lewis’s column “Abroad at Home” appears on the op-ed page of The New York Times. Lewis won his first Pulitzer Prize in 1955 for a series of articles on the dismissal of a Navy employee as a security risk and his second Pulitzer in 1963 for coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Andrew C. von Eschenbach (MED ’67), the Director of the National Cancer Institute, will address the School of Medicine. He is a nationally recognized urologic surgeon and a former director of the Genitourinary Cancer Center and the Prostate Cancer Research Program at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. von Eschenbach was a founding member of the National Dialogue on Cancer and was elected President of the American Cancer Society.

Martha C. Nussbaum, the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, University of Chicago will speak at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. A distinguished and renowned academic, Nussbaum has chaired the Committee on International Cooperation and the Committee on the Status of Women for the American Philosophical Association, as well as serving as one of three presidents of the association. She has received numerous honorary degrees and has founded the new Center for Comparative Constitutionalism.

E.J. Dionne, Jr. will address the Georgetown Public Policy Institute. Dionne is a columnist for The Washington Post and a senior fellow in the Governmental Studies Program at the Brookings Institute. Dionne’s 1991 book, Why Americans Hate Politics was nominated for the National Book Award. He is also a regular political analyst for CNN and National Public Radio.

Jose A. Forquet (CAS ’88) will speak at the MBA Awards Ceremony. President Bush appointed Forquet as the U.S. Executive Director of the Inter-American Development Bank for the Department of the Treasury in 2001. Prior to working at the Department of the Treasury, Forquet was Vice President of the Emerging Debt Market Sales Group and then Vice President of the Office of Career Development for Goldman, Sachs and Company. Forquet also worked as an Operations Officer with the Central Intelligence Agency and was a member of the Secret Service.