Cedar Crest College is proud to announce Kate Zernike, author and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for The New York Times, as keynote speaker for this year’s 155th Commencement Ceremony. Zernike has covered a range of topics throughout her distinguished career, from education and national affairs to investigative reporting.
The 155th Commencement Ceremony will be held on Saturday, May 10, 2025, at the PPL Center at 701 Hamilton Street, Allentown. The event serves as both a celebration of student achievement and the culmination of a week of related activities, including Espejo: Reflections of Our Community on Thursday and the College’s Awards and Graduate Hooding Ceremonies held on Friday.
Tickets are required. Those who are unable to attend can watch a live stream of the ceremony on Cedar Crest’s YouTube page youtube.com/cedarcrestcollege. For more information, please visit www.cedarcrest.edu/commencement.
About the Speaker
Zernike has been a reporter for The New York Times since 2000. She began her tenure as an education reporter and has since worked across the investigations, national, styles, metro and science desks, and as a reporter in the Washington Bureau. She was a member of the team that received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for a series of stories on Al Qaeda before and after the terror attacks of 9/11. Since January 2022, she has served as the paper’s lead reporter on women’s reproductive rights, including abortion.
She is the author of two books: “Boiling Mad: Behind the Lines in Tea Party America” (2010) and “The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins and the Fight for Women in Science” (2023), which was named one of the 25 best books of the year by the American Library Association and was a finalist for the Royal Society Science Book Prize.
A graduate of the University of Toronto, Zernike began her journalism career at The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Massachusetts, before joining The Boston Globe. She later joined The New York Times, where she has continued to make a lasting impact on the field of journalism.
Through her fearless pursuit of truth and dedication to informing the public, Zernike exemplifies the kind of leadership and resilience Cedar Crest College graduates aim to carry into the world.